Cleveland Public Theatre's 'Johanna: Facing Forward' is a moving portrait of courage and determination, but it's still a work in progress

Before Friday's opening-night performance of "Johanna: Facing Forward," Johanna Orozco-Fraser - the woman upon whom the world-premiere play is based - beamed as she hugged friends and family in the lobby of Cleveland Public Theatre.

"Everyone I love is here," she said.

Husband Christopher Fraser, in a crisp military dress uniform, hovered protectively by her side as waves of well-wishers approached and receded.

"It's an honor to meet you," one woman said shyly, and then grew bold. "Can I get a picture with you?"

REVIEW

Johanna: Facing Forward

What: A Cleveland Public Theatre production of the world-premiere play written and directed by Tlaloc Rivas. Based on the Plain Dealer series "Johanna: Facing Forward" by Rachel Dissell and the journals of Johanna Orozco.

When: Through Sunday, June 13.

Where: CPT's Gordon Square Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave., Cleveland.

Tickets: $12-$28. Go to cptonline.org or call 216-631-2727.

Approximate running time: Two hours, including one 15-minute intermission.

Orozco-Fraser obliged, trying not to crush a bouquet of flowers she clutched in one hand, a gift she planned to give her fictional self.

It's a demanding part, requiring the actress to be onstage almost constantly, sometimes wearing a surgical mask and only able to communicate with vigorous shakes and nods of the head or by scrawling messages on a whiteboard, just as the flesh-and-blood Johanna did after she was shot in the face at point-blank range by her ex-boyfriend in March 2007.

Her injures were catastrophic, her jaw almost completely obliterated by the blast, along with her lower lip and chin, leaving an open hole. Birdshot lodged in her head and neck, some pellets barely missing the spinal cord and optic nerve.

Her wounds, of course, weren't just physical - as she said at the sentencing hearing of Juan Ruiz, the boy she once loved who pulled the trigger, his attack "shattered her heart into pieces." That injury proved as difficult to heal as those to her lovely, round face.

The role is a rare showcase for a young actress, and on Friday night, the Peruvian-born Tania Benites, who graduated from Cleveland State University with a bachelor's degree in theater in 2012, earned those flowers.

Possessing a natural, comfortable stage presence, Benites captures the sweetness and sassiness of the teenaged Johanna but also her depth, a maturity born of losing her parents at 13. She makes us like Johanna instantly, a quality Dissell (Courtney Brown) responds to when she finally convinces Johanna's protective family to allow her to visit the Lincoln West High School senior in her bed at Cleveland's MetroHealth Medical Center.

Benites' honest, poignant performance is aided by Rivas' thoughtful, powerful - though troubled - script. (More on that trouble in a minute.)

In adapting Johanna's remarkable tale of recovery and courage for the stage, Rivas said he worked hardest to channel his heroine's authentic voice, and he's done a gorgeous job of it.

He mines the richness of Johanna's interior life in a series of flashbacks - as she loses her mother to a long illness and her father to a car accident in the same year, tastes the heady drink of first love, then watches in horror as that love sours and turns to poison in her mouth.

Through Johanna - and an ominous, constantly ringing cellphone - Rivas tracks the building storm of Juan's possessiveness and rage.

They meet cute: Juan (Jason Estremera) gets her number, calls her and awkwardly asks her out. She playfully chastises him for not knowing the rules.

JOHANNA: You have to get permission.

JUAN: Permission?

JOHANNA: Yeah, permission. You can't just ask a half-Puerto Rican, half-Guatemalan girl out without asking her grandparents.

The scene smartly does double duty, setting up their budding romance and letting us know that Johanna is no wild child, the kind of girl so easy to blame when bad things happen to her. The message is clear: Even nice girls can fall for the wrong guy.

Puppy love turns to dangerous paranoia when Juan transfers schools to keep an eye on her. He belittles her, calling her names. His beats her, his kisses turning to bruises. He uses his phone as a tool of intimidation, texting and calling at all hours.

When Johanna can take no more and breaks up with him, he rapes her at knifepoint. Mercifully, we don't see this attack but hear about it in an artful but uncomfortable scene where a cop questions her as her legs are splayed apart in stirrups, a nurse doing an invasive exam to gather evidence for a rape kit.

Though he is arrested, Juan is released from an overcrowded juvie jail. As a teen, Johanna can't get an order of protection from the courts available to adult victims. The safety net meant to keep girls like her from harm is tragically frayed.

In the CPT production, the sexual violence and gore of Johanna's ordeal are re-created with admirable restraint. When she is shot, Benites rears back in slow motion, grabbing at her face - no pyrotechnics or prosthetic makeup are needed to make the event any more harrowing.

Doctors describe her condition using a projection of a ghostly X-ray of Johanna's head and neck that grows larger and larger, like an advancing ghoul, with each terrible revelation of the damage done to her.

But while Rivas draws a vivid, colorful portrait of Johanna with deft and convincing brushstrokes, too many of his characters feel more like hastily sketched outlines.

"Johanna" is filled with officials and authority figures - cops, lawyers, judges, editors and doctors. It's hard to make bureaucrats sound human, but their lines feel especially stiff and perfunctory, as though they were reading from medical journals and law books rather than speaking, and their wooden dialogue is off-putting. (For a primer on writing for suits of any ilk, watch an episode of any incarnation of "Law & Order.")

That verbal stiffness extends to more active, interesting characters such as Dissell, here portrayed, as she is in real life, as a tireless investigator and zealous advocate for the voiceless, particularly women and girls.

Rivas wants to show she's a firebrand in the newsroom, but when Dissell is making an impassioned argument to her editor for more time to get Johanna to open up, her pitch about the scourge of teen dating violence comes off as though it were cribbed from a Very Important Public Service Announcement.

The playwright means for the relationship between the dogged reporter and her traumatized source to be central to the play, and his instincts are dead on - but their connection is never fully fleshed out. More moments between the two would help their rapport read as true.

Some judicious script doctoring - a few nips here and tucks there - would help make room. Do we really need three courtroom scenes?

The cast is a mix of CPT regulars; a few newcomers, like "Jeopardy!" champ Arthur Chu, playing Plain Dealer photographer Gus Chan, among other roles; and members of Teatro Publico de Cleveland, a Latino company launched by CPT in 2013. While the collaboration brings a welcome authenticity to the production - too many plays done in Cleveland don't reflect the city's boundless ethnic and racial diversity - it also brings a mix of acting skills.

As is often the case when vets and newbies share the spotlight, passages that should crackle with speed and life feel forced and waxen. (A glorious exception is Nebeska Aviles, making her second appearance in a full-length play as Johanna's Aunt Hilda, a woman with a vinegary disposition dedicated to keeping nosy reporters out of her niece's hair.)

Johanna and her relatives often speak to each other in Spanish, another welcome dose of realness. But the English translations - projected on the smooth walls of a spare, utilitarian set by Aaron Benson featuring a towering replica of The Guardians of Traffic - need to be faster and better-synced to the actors' delivery, because who wants to be reminded of an old school kung fu flick?

Right now, "Johanna" feels more like a PSA than a play - an earnest piece of advocacy about the need for better laws to protect teens from domestic violence from state to state and a better understanding of the signs of a toxic relationship. Those are important messages, but why not have it all?

Despite its clunkiness, portions of "Johanna: Facing Forward" are truly moving, arguing that with some textual tinkering and subsequent productions, this play can grow into a compelling piece of theater.

The proof of its potential to change hearts and minds and pack houses throughout the country is in a triumphant scene of Johanna at the prom. Benites enters alone, begowned, the lower half of face covered with an elegant scarf.

As she tries to let loose and have fun, she hears Juan's sneering voice echoing in her ears. She falters, and it's a heart-in-the-throat sort of moment, filled with palpable dread. But she shakes his taunts from her mind, and soon, she's moving to the thrumming beat of dance music.

On opening night, the crowd cheered for Johanna's small victory as loud as any at a playoff game at The Q. A disco ball suspended above the Gordon Square Theatre threw shards of light around the room, an allegory for the radiance of her spirit - girl as supernova.